


Picking Up the Pieces

by LibraryMage



Series: Break Your Chains [28]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Character, Autistic Ezra Bridger, Autistic Sabine Wren, Brother-Sister Relationships, Found Family, Gen, Guilt, Hard of Hearing Sabine Wren, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queerplatonic Relationships, So much guilt, hard of hearing character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-10
Updated: 2018-05-10
Packaged: 2019-05-04 18:55:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14599542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibraryMage/pseuds/LibraryMage
Summary: As they make their way home after crashing the TIE Defender, Sabine and Ezra have a talk.  Waiting for them to return, Kanan and Hera have a talk of their own.





	Picking Up the Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> warning for: references to past character death and near-death; internalized guilt about being traumatized; self-blame for past abuse

Ezra kept his eyes on the sky above him even as he and Sabine slowed down their pace, no longer running.  They were far enough from the site of the crash that they could afford to walk, at least for now.  Sabine did her own check of the air above them before lowering her blaster and ultimately deciding to put it back in her holster.

“Wonder if Zeb’s gotten back yet,” Sabine said.

“Wonder how mad Hera’s gonna be when he tells her what you did,” Ezra said with a small grin.

“Hey, we’re in this one together, vod,” Sabine said.  “But Hera can't be too mad once she sees we got that.”

She gestured to the flight data recorder they’d taken from the TIE defender that was tucked under Ezra’s arm.

“Assuming we actually get it back to her,” Ezra said.

“We will.”

Silence fell between them as they kept walking, slowly getting their breath back after running away from the crash site.  Their footsteps and the occasional distant _mrr_ that signaled a loth-cat’s presence were the only sounds to be heard until…

Ezra froze as he heard it, glancing over his shoulder, scanning the horizon, searching for the source of that strange howling sound.  His eyes widened as he spotted it, far in the distance.  Something big and distinctly canine.  It couldn’t be what he thought it was.  When he was a kid, loth-wolves were practically legends.  Sure, they’d existed before, but no one in living memory had ever _seen_ one.

“Hey,” Sabine said, gently tapping Ezra’s shoulder.  Ezra jumped and looked back at her.  Somehow, in those few seconds he’d been looking at the wolf, he’d almost forgotten Sabine was there.  “What is it?”

“You don’t see that?” he asked.  He turned his head back in the direction of the loth-wolf, only to see that it had vanished.

Sabine followed his gaze, her eyes narrowing.

“I don’t see anything,” she said.  She turned her gaze back to Ezra, her perplexed expression not changing.

“Never mind,” Ezra said, shaking his head.  “It’s not important.”

“You sure?” Sabine asked.

“Yeah.”

As they kept walking, Ezra could practically feel Sabine’s eyes continually shifting toward him, shooting him sideways glances.  He could sense her concern poking at him like a needle.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Sabine said.  Then she gave a heavy sigh and gave up trying to pretend.  “Are you okay?”

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” Ezra asked with a frustrated sigh.

“Because we’re your family and we love you?” Sabine said.

“I don’t know, okay?” Ezra said.  “I really just don’t know.”

“I know you’ve been having nightmares,” Sabine said.

“Of course I have been,” Ezra said, unable to keep the frustration out of his voice.  “That’s basically the only thing I can do now is have nightmares and check out of reality.”

Ezra forced himself to take a breath.  He wasn’t actually mad at Sabine, and acting like he was wasn’t going to solve anything.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “Things just…aren’t easy right now.”

Ezra looked down at the ground as they kept walking, trying to think of something, _anything_ to change the subject to.

“Are you okay?” he asked.  “I know you’ve been having nightmares, too.”

“How --”

“You don’t hide it as well as you think you do,” Ezra said.

Sabine’s jaw tightened and for a moment, Ezra was sure she was going to just refuse to talk about it.

“Things went…bad on Mandalore,” she said, the words coming out through gritted teeth like she resented every single on of them.  “Tristan and my mother…they almost died.”

She crossed her arms, staring at the ground as she kept walking.

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Sabine said.

“It might help,” Ezra said.

“Maybe for you,” she said.  “Not for me.”

Ezra wasn’t exactly convinced, but he wasn’t about to argue and try to make her talk when she didn’t want to.  He knew he’d hate that if she did it to him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “I wish I could’ve been there to help.”

“I’m glad you weren’t,” Sabine said.  “It was bad enough having Hera and Zeb and Chopper there.  They could’ve --”

She shook her head, not finishing the sentence, as if she was reminding herself that she’d said she didn’t want to talk about it.

“Still wish we could’ve done something,” Ezra said, more to himself than to Sabine.

“Hmm?”  Sabine glanced over her shoulder at him.

“I said I still wish we could’ve done something,” Ezra said again.  He hadn’t really thought much about it, but it hit him that he’d been doing that a lot over the past year.

“Are you okay?” he asked.  “You just…you seem to need stuff repeated a lot lately.”

Sabine’s shoulders tensed up then went back to normal as she sighed.

“Guess you’d notice eventually,” she said.  “It’s not that big of a deal, so please don’t freak out or anything.  I’ve just been…I’ve lost some of my hearing.”

Ezra wanted to say something in response, but he couldn’t think of what.  He hadn’t known what he’d been expecting Sabine to say, but that hadn’t been it.

“Before you say anything,” Sabine said quickly, rushing through her explanation, pushing it all out at once, “it’s been going on a while, and I knew it would probably happen.  I work with explosives and noise dampeners don’t solve everything and when we’re in the field, sometimes things happen when I’m not expecting it and don’t have my helmet on.  So I knew.  Hera knows, but I didn’t want to bother anyone else with it until it got bad enough, especially you and Kanan.  But it’s really -- it’s not a big deal.  It’s not that bad yet.  I just can't always understand what people are saying if it's too quiet or something.  And I’ve been preparing for if it gets worse.”

Ezra blinked, taking in everything she’d just dropped on him, trying to think of what he could say.  She’d said it wasn’t a big deal, at least not to her, and he believed it.  If anyone could handle… _anything_ , really, it was Sabine.  Guilt stuck at the inside of his chest like red-hot pins jabbing into him.  Sabine as handling everything so well, like she always did, and here he was, falling apart at a moment’s notice.

“Sabine, I -- I’m sorry,” he said.

“I just told you it’s not --”

“Not for that,” Ezra said.  “For everything else.  And for…being like this.”

Sabine stopped in her tracks and turned back to face him.  Ezra stopped, too, a coil of fear rising in his chest as he wondered if he’d said something wrong.

“Don’t you dare apologize for that,” Sabine said.  “It isn’t your fault.”

“Why do people keep saying that?” Ezra muttered.

“Because it’s true,” Sabine said.  “It’s Maul’s fault, not yours.  He did this to you.  _He_ hurt Kanan.  You didn’t ask for any of this.”

Ezra stared down at the ground at his feet, trying to avoid Sabine’s gaze.  He knew.  He _knew_ that she was right, but every word she said made something twist violently in Ezra’s chest.  Hadn’t he asked for it when he’d gone with Maul in the first place?  When he hadn’t tried to kill him sooner?  When he’d let Maul use him as bait for Kanan?

“We need to keep moving,” Ezra said.

“I know,” Sabine said.  “Just…you don’t have to apologize for that.  And if anyone’s making you feel like you do, I’ll kick their ass.  Don’t care who it is.”

Ezra couldn’t help but smile a little.  _That_ sounded so much more like Sabine, and hearing it at least didn’t make him feel like he was being punched in the gut.

“It’s not anyone else,” Ezra said as they began their trek across the plains again.  “Just me.”

Sabine was quiet for a moment, but Ezra could practically feel the wheels turning in her head as she tried to pull together the words she wanted.

“After I ran away from the Academy, and after everything that happened with my family, I was kind of a mess,” she said.  “I was so mad at them for not standing by me, but I just wanted them back and I hated myself for leaving them behind.  Ketsu was there, but for a while, that just didn’t matter.  I know it’s not the same and he wasn’t your family, but…”

She trailed off and shrugged.

“It’s not a bad thing,” she said.  “And you don’t have to say you’re sorry for feeling messed up over it.”

Ezra’s shoulders crept up defensively as he searched for some way to deflect the conversation away from him, back to her, back to _anything_ else.

“What did you mean when you said “especially you and Kanan?”” he asked.

Sabine shot him a quizzical look.

“You said you didn’t want to bother anyone, especially me and Kanan,” he said.

“Oh, that,” Sabine said.  She absently kicked at a small stone in her path before answering.  “You two just have a lot going on right now.  I didn’t want to add to it.  I felt like…like with everything you’re dealing with…I felt guilty for having my own problems, okay?”

She rushed the final sentence out and crossed her arms as if she resented the entire idea of having to say it.

“It’s not like it’s your fault we’re dealing with this,” Ezra said.  He sighed.  “But I guess the guilt doesn’t care.”

“It really doesn’t,” Sabine said.  She clenched her jaw and Ezra could see her fingers twitch as she tried not to curl one hand into a fist.  She was clearly done talking about it.

“Tell you what,” Ezra said.  “If anyone makes me feel like I need to apologize for what happened to me, I’ll tell you and you can kick their ass.  And if anyone makes _you_ feel like you need to apologize for your stuff, you tell me and I’ll kick their ass.”

A smile twitched across Sabine’s face.

“Deal,” she said.

* * *

 

Kanan could feel Hera’s eyes on him as he paced across the clearing at their base camp.  The air had long since cooled as the sun set and night fell, and there was still no sign of Sabine and Ezra and no communication from them.

“I’m sure they’re okay,” Hera said, though Kanan could hear the tension in her voice that revealed just how nervous she was.

“I shouldn’t have let Ezra do this,” Kanan said, more to himself than to Hera.  “He’s not ready.  Not after everything that’s happened.”

“He’s not ready, or you’re not?” Hera asked.

Kanan sighed heavily, settling down next to her in the grass beside the _Phantom_ and resting his head in his hands.  He _wasn’t_ ready to be letting Ezra run off on a mission without him, even something as simple as recon.  And now Ezra and Sabine were on the run from Imperials, and anything they tried to do to help risked leading the Empire right to them.

“You can't keep him grounded at base camp forever,” Hera said.

“I know,” Kanan muttered.  “I _know_.  But after everything he’s been through, if he was captured by the Empire…I’d never forgive myself, Hera.”

Kanan’s guilt coiled around inside him, choking him as everything he could have and should have done differently ran through his mind.  He should have had him and Ezra sleep and keep watch in shifts.  Then Ezra wouldn’t have been able to run off without him knowing.  He should have _known_ Ezra would take off and go after Maul on his own.  He should have just taken Ezra into hiding anyway, even after Maul was dead, just to keep him away from all this.

“I failed him, Hera,” Kanan said.  “He should _never_ have had to face Maul alone like that.  He’s my responsibility and I can’t keep letting him get himself hurt.”

“This is Ezra we’re talking about,” Hera said.  “No matter what you did, he would have gone after Maul, and he would have done it alone.  He was trying to protect you.”

“I know,” Kanan said.  As reassuring as she’d meant it to sound, Kanan knew it was just another way he’d let Ezra down.  He was the adult and Ezra was the kid.  Ezra shouldn’t feel like it was his responsibility to protect him, and clearly he hadn’t taught Ezra that well enough.

“I just don’t want him to get hurt,” Kanan said.  “And sometimes it seems like the whole galaxy is trying to make sure he does.”

Hera slid an arm around his shoulders and he leaned into it.

“He’s just been through to much,” Kanan said.  “And I’ve never been able to stop it.  I just try and hold him together after the fact.”

“You got him away from Maul in the first place,” Hera said, her voice gentle.  “You saved him when Maul found him here on Lothal.  You’ve protected him from so much.  But you can't do it forever.”

“Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try,” Kanan said.

“Maybe not,” Hera said.  “But sometimes you’ll fail, and when that happens, you can still be there for him when it’s over.  We _all_ can.”

“You know,” Kanan said with a small sigh, “sometimes I hate how you’re always right.”

“Oh, I know, love.”


End file.
